In the absence of archival material
, myths and legends can
easily congregate around buildings
and even whole towns.
Many Irish people believe that their local nineteenth-century barracks,
hospital, or school was destined to be built in India instead of Ireland, yet these are little more than myths. Local folklore has it that
an architect or civil servant accidentally dropped
the building’s drawings in the
‘Ireland’
pigeon-hole instead of the ‘India
’
one in some
dim
imperial
office
in London
,
and so an ‘Irish’ building now stands incongruously in some Asian desert, and
an ‘Indian’ building
–
often, it is said, with
Gothic turrets or
polychromatic
Italianate
belvederes–ended up somewhere in the Irish landscape.
It is unlikely any of these stories will ever be
proven to be true. [First paragraph]